So when the Dow and the Nasdaq pummel record highs, as they've been doing with exhilarating frequency, you probably ponder your own portfolio and wonder: "Huh?"

Because while the main market index rose almost 5 percent for the quarter and the technology sector jumped 17 percent and the Internet sector went so high that oxygen masks popped out of the overhead compartments - the average stock mutual fund failed to cross the 1 percent mark.

It was a triumph for smart investors and dull investors.

The smart investors are the ones who figured out that this is not just a new economy - full employment, rising productivity, low interest rates (is everybody finally happy?) - but a new economy that will eventually turn us all into geeks.

Technology rules, and the Internet rocks. It's not an aberration or a speculative mania, goes the geek perspective. The fabric of life has changed. We're all wearing fiber optic.

And the dull investors are the ones who plugged their portfolios into index funds, the financial equivalent of cruise control. The technology and Internet sectors have become so powerful that they dominate the broader market indexes, pushing the index funds ahead faster than the rest of the market.

And the rest of the market? Embarrassing by comparison.

The traditional approach to good investing calls for finding stocks that everyone else has overlooked. It's called value investing, and it's what made the likes of Warren Buffet famous and famously wealthy.

But value investing doesn't work here. Mr. Buffet's investment choices, of late, have been buffeted by winds of change. And the hidden values in the market remain hidden.

And that picture looks set for the rest of year.

Perhaps, as Guy Halverson writes on page 16, the market is ready to shift emphasis. But it's been ready to shift for the last year.

And maybe it will happen this year. For now, however, the path seems clear: geek and meek.